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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23790523">Politics, Poisoning, and Parental Neuroses: A Dycedarg/Ruvelia Shipping Manifesto</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier/pseuds/CorpseBrigadier'>CorpseBrigadier</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Ship Manifestos [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Final Fantasy Tactics</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Embedded Images, F/M, Meta, Nonfiction, Reproductive Angst/Trauma, Ship Manifesto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 22:20:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>11,577</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23790523</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier/pseuds/CorpseBrigadier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>An extended discussion as to why an evil video game goatman should hook up with a character nobody even remembers was in his video game (Canon Primer Provided).</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Louveria Atkascha | Queen Ruvelia/Dycedarg Beoulve</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Ship Manifestos [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1740676</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Meta Manifesto 2020 Fest</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Introduction</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><strong>Note on Names:</strong> In my own fanworks, I generally mix and match names from the PSX and PSP translations, but I've tried to stick to the PSX orthography here for the sake of being consistent in a document that assumes its readers might not be familiar with the narrative.</p><p><strong>Note on Content:</strong> This work contains canon-typical mentions of violence and human suffering (namely <em>lots</em> of people getting shot/stabbed/poisoned, people turning into eldritch demonbeasts, people turning into animate corpses that beg for death, peasants starving while the nobility cackles, etc...).</p><p>This work also contains <em>a lot</em> of non-explicit references to issues surrounding childbirth, infant death, and reproductive trauma as well as some speculations about possible incest with regards to other ships.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p>If you’ve clicked on this ship manifesto, you may or may not be familiar with Square Enix’s hit 1998 tactical RPG <em> Final Fantasy Tactics. </em> If you are, this is great! If you aren’t, this is also great… because this document will go into a detailed level of speculation about a character everyone who <em> has </em> played the game has quite possibly forgotten even exists. As such, coming into this unhinged ramble without any preconceived notions as to what the canon is actually about may ultimately be to your benefit.</p><p>In any event, the character in question is Ruvelia Atkascha née Larg (also called Louveria in the game's 2007 PSP remaster), and this document will hopefully inform you as to how she is actually pretty cool despite having less than two paragraphs dedicated to her characterization. More significantly, however, it is going to tell you how she is an ideal character for Ramza Beoulve’s trashbag older brother Dycedarg to bang for some grade A political schemery. If--for some reason--you have read <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/20874131/">a prior ship manifesto</a> that I wrote about how Ramza Beoulve’s other trashbag older brother really needs to hook up with a disgruntled revolutionary sheepman  despite <em>never having met him in canon</em>, get ready for the next level of absurd FFT rarepair shipping after that! Dycedarg/Ruvelia is a ship wherein the characters not only fail to ever appear on the same screen at the same time but where one of the characters <em> fails to actually ever appear on the screen at all.</em></p><p>As it worked out so well with the last time I explained my elaborate <em>Final Fantasy Tactics</em> shipping thoughts, this manifesto has been subdivided into four chapters. In the first, I explain the plot of <em>Final Fantasy Tactics</em> as best I can in relation to the characters, such that individuals who have not had the opportunity to fumble through a 20 year old JRPG with no good modern ports may still have the necessary context to enjoy my labyrinthine speculations. In the second, I will make my singular argument as to why Ruvelia and Dycedarg totally should fuck and possibly did fuck and how they might actually have a few cool parallels to form the basis of an interesting relationship in the midst of the fucking they should definitely be doing. The third chapter concerns itself with fleshing out potentials for high Beoulve/Larg family drama that might provide a good backdrop for fanworks with regards to this loathsome goat man and a queen nobody remembers was actually in this game. The final chapter will offer a listing of the lamentably scant number of fanworks about them that are actually already available.</p><p>I hope you enjoy this delve into my very elaborate opinions on barely characterized <em>Final Fantasy Tactics </em>characters, and that you consider (if you have any inclination to do so), joining me in my maddened conspiracy theories about the Ivalician aristocracy. </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Canon Primer</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><b>The Plot of </b> <b> <em>Final Fantasy Tactics</em> </b></p>
<p>This game is sort of a retelling of the English War of the Roses using goofy little pixelmen who all have hard to pronounce names and who also suffer terribly. The gist of the political situation at the opening of the narrative is that the kingdom of Ivalice (analogous to medieval England) has just emerged from the Fifty Years War (analogous the Hundred Years War) against Ordallia (analogous to medieval France), and everything went very badly. The country is impoverished; people are starving; there’s a lot of peasant uprisings. Furthermore, King Omdoria III (analogous to Henry VI) is sickly and not too bright, and his wife Ruvelia (analogous to Margaret of Anjou) is functionally ruling everything and allegedly being tyrannical and slutty about it. After Omdoria dies of his sickliness, there is a succession conflict between the duchies of Gallione (analogous to the Lancaster faction) and Zeltennia (analogous to the York faction). The former is led by Duke Larg, who is Ruvelia’s brother and supports her biological son Orinas as the successor to the throne. The latter is led by Duke Goltanna, who supports Omdoria’s adopted daughter Ovelia Atkascha. They fight, and Ivalice gets even more impoverished, plague ridden, famine filled, and full of sad peasants. Also… because this is a JRPG, it turns out that the whole war is being manipulated by evil demons, and you have to kill a sexy, leotard-wearing, multi-winged God to end it.</p>
<p>The protagonist of the game is a nobleman named Ramza Beoulve, who is the youngest son of a family of Duke Larg’s retainers. While he’s a sweet bunnykitten of an individual, he starts the narrative not being particularly well-respected, as he’s a (presumable) bastard who hasn’t done anything cool like his war hero brother Zalbag or his well-positioned politician brother Dycedarg or even his teenage cleric sister Alma. The premise of the game is that you are looking at a lost history, which explains how Ramza is the true God-killing hero in the midst of this succession conflict, whereas most prior historical accounts have claimed that his childhood BFF, a peasant named Delita Hyral, was the peace-bringing savior of Ivalice who united the country in the midst of this war and eventually became its king.</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p><b>The Plot of</b> <b><em>Final Fantasy Tactics</em></b> <b>as it Pertains to Dycedarg and Ruvelia</b></p>
<p><strong>Dycedarg Beoulve (<a href="https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Dycedarg_Beoulve">[Wiki Article]</a>; b. October 24, starts game at age 37):</strong>  Dycedarg is the eldest son of House Beoulve and is the head of the household at the opening of the game, his father having died of a prolonged illness around the end of the Fifty Years War. He is good at scheming and good at politics and also does neato magic with his rune-covered sword. Like just about everyone in this game over the age of twenty, he was involved in The War™ before the game and becomes a major character in The War™ 2.0 that occurs during the game. Part of this is because <em> his </em> childhood BFF is Duke Bestrada Larg, who appointed him as the Duchy's official evil chancellor upon the death of Dycedarg's father Balbanes. While he should technically have inherited his dad's position as the leader of the Hokuten knights in Gallione's service, Dycedarg ceded this position to his younger brother Zalbag in favor of pursuing his evil chancellorship career.</p>
<p><span class="imdycedarg01">Look at this asshole!</span> It should not take one long to determine that Dycedarg is the primary baddie of the game’s political plot and that he is awful in every way. Upon first glance, really, you should know that he is about to betray you and murder everyone you love. He has the hair of an Instagram fitness bro about to sell you multi-level-marketing herbal supplements, and he wears a long black battle hoodie evidently designed by whomever makes outfits for 90s Disney villains. He has special unique-to-him animations for pouring himself a chalice of wine and drinking it in the midst of planning to murder an innocent teenage girl. He is a very very very bad man, and he has many many many many schemes that will be important over the course of the game.</p>
<p>The game opens with Dycedarg’s complete dickbaggery not being apparent to his family, however. The first scene in which he appears is a heart-breaking gathering where his father, Balbanes, is on his deathbed, trying to give Ramza a pep talk about being a good boy and becoming a cool knight like his bros. Dycedarg at this point is barely a presence. He's just there, standing by, not really doing much of anything, certainly not being suspicious, and definitely not commenting on the fact that his father’s death conveniently makes him head of House Beoulve.<sup>[Let's Play: <a href="https://youtu.be/lz4oLOj1kLo">PSX</a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/xUBHiVjUlLM">PSP</a>]</sup></p>
<p>Among his first actions as family patriarch is to orchestrate the kidnapping of a major Marquis (Mesdoram Elmdor) by paying off a shady dude named Gustav from a starving revolutionary group of former peasant soldiers known as the Death Corps. This almost works, save for the fact that Gustav really sucks at everything and gets himself stabbed by Wiegraf Folles, the head of the Death Corps who is very high-minded and not up for kidnapping noblemen--only killing them. Dycedarg’s scheme in all this was to eliminate Elmdor as a potential enemy when the obvious war on the horizon broke out, as he (correctly) assumed that he was going to side with Zeltennia and lead the March of Limberry against Gallione.</p>
<p>The other reason his scheme of the day fucks up beyond Wiegraf, however, is that his littlest bro Ramza gets it into his head that he should try to engage in some heroics and investigate Elmdor’s disappearance. This is despite the fact that Dycedarg possibly manifested the slightest mote of fraternal concern by telling him to stay home and sit around guarding the castle in which they live, where he would presumably be safely away from all of Dycedarg’s many many schemes. Ramza eventually returns home, having retrieved Elmdor from a very self-righteous Wiegraf, and Dycedarg fumes a little about him not obeying orders. Nevertheless, he grudgingly sends him to go off and kill some revolutionaries, figuring his brother has earned his place as a member of the cruel nobility cutting down peasants who don’t know their damn place.<sup>[Let's Play: <a href="https://youtu.be/fLooDT7yEfw">PSX</a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/71fvOu_kt8w">PSP</a>]</sup></p>
<p>This backfires rather tremendously, as it turns out it might have really helped if Ramza was guarding that fucking castle. The Death Corps raid the Beoulve estate, kill a bunch of knights, stab the crap out of Dycedarg, and drag away Teta Hyral, the adorable kid sister of Ramza’s BFF Delita Hyral. (Remember him?)<sup>[Let's Play: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QCQh-o3gfE&amp;list=PLqgujxwvSPdS_hIogu0Wg1v0Mnw9xYY8w&amp;index=24">PSX</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONG3R1EdN6I&amp;list=PLldM0Bch-d1niwDojuVKf3OPAR8ve9a6E&amp;index=24">PSP</a>]</sup> Dycedarg collapses dramatically and upon waking, sends Zalbag off to go stab the crap out of Wiegraf in return. In the meantime, he tells Ramza and Delita that said stabbing will not commence until Teta is safely rescued, as she is like a sister to him. This is almost sort of true, as being a sister to Dycedarg probably means that he will treat you as an expendable pawn, lie about being willing to save your life, and allow you to be shot in a hostage situation if it is at all to his political benefit.<sup>[Let's Play: <a href="https://youtu.be/aZw998-_oGw">PSX</a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/ONG3R1EdN6I?t=94">PSP</a>]</sup></p>
<p>Later, Teta just so happens to get shot in a hostage situation, which makes Delita very sad and provides him with the angsty backstory necessary to become a sinister Machiavellian dickweed of the same stripe as Dycedarg. Ramza, in the meanwhile, becomes disillusioned with his family and decides to abandon them to become a mercenary. Unbeknownst to him, his friendly new mercenary mentor, Gaff Gafgarion, is another extremely shady dude who is secretly in Dycedarg’s employ. If one wishes to be charitable to Dycedarg, it’s almost sort of nice of him, as he has thoughtfully hired a murderous war criminal to act as a babysitter to his kid brother while he takes a gap year to find himself.</p>
<p><span class="imglc">Gafgarion is not being paid enough to deal with this.</span>Old Gaff Gaff is actually doing more than serving as a chaperone, however. He’s also doing actual mercenary work, which involves arranging for the kidnapping of princess Ovelia Atkascha (remember her?) by other mercenaries disguised as Goltanna’s men, such that she can be killed and the event blamed on Zeltennia. This fucks up for very convoluted reasons, which involve Delita resurfacing to kill those mercenaries, showing up with more dudes who are also disguised as Goltanna’s men, kidnapping the princess himself, and then not killing her. This makes Dycedarg unhappy. This honestly makes me unhappy, as I've played this game a half dozen times and still have trouble remembering who is disguised as what and which mercenaries (or non-mercenaries in disguise) are under whose orders at this point.</p>
<p>Anyway, it comes out that part of the reason Gaff has failed in his princess-killing mission is that Ramza disobeyed his orders and fought to keep Ovelia safe out of a heroic sense of moral duty. Dycedarg, who has already had his younger brother mess up his schemes before, callously tells Gafgarion to kill Ramza if he keeps having a conscience and running contrary to his goals.<sup>[Let's Play: <a href="https://youtu.be/wwhYiEjlNGA">PSX</a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/C4ARBZ875xk">PSP</a>]</sup> Gaff, however, who is a refreshingly straightforward individual motivated solely by his love of money, isn’t actually that invested in getting entangled in more family drama than he needs to. He later tries to convince the Ramza that the price of progress is a few dead princesses and that he just should come home and apologize to his brothers, saying Dycedarg will let bygones be bygones. Whether or not this is true is up in the air, as Ramza proceeds to boss battle Gafgarion to death before Dycedarg's willingness to forgive can be put to the test.</p>
<p>Some time after this, Ramza goes to Zalbag--who has somehow managed to remain oblivious to the fact that Dycedarg is not a nice dude--and tries to tell him about these princess-killing shenanigans. Zalbag then tells his bastard kid brother off for slandering their not-a-bastard older brother, functionally disowns him, and goes off to continue fighting a war in the service of Dycedarg’s unending 24/7 schemes.<sup>[Let's Play: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjEni5mw2dE&amp;list=PLqgujxwvSPdS_hIogu0Wg1v0Mnw9xYY8w&amp;index=62">PSX</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIBDqEUfzbI">PSP</a>]</sup> Midway through that war, however, he realizes that Ramza might have a point. During a siege in which all of Zalbag’s troops are disabled by an airborne poison, Dycedarg takes an opportunity in the midst of the confusion to stab the shit out of Duke Larg in front of him, telling him to frame some random dead guy as an assassin so he can presumably usurp their liege lord, take over Gallione, and assume the regency when Orinas is crowned. Larg, who is feeling very unhappy about being stabbed, exclaims that Dycedarg killed his father just to get a chance to kill him. He then dies, leaving Dycedarg to dramatically collapse from the aforementioned poison (he really likes dramatically collapsing). Zalbag then has to take a moment to process how very fucked up his life has just gotten, as he was apparently not anticipating any sudden acts of treason nor requests that he cover for them that day.<sup>[Let's Play: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDdyxlkhB6U&amp;list=PLqgujxwvSPdS_hIogu0Wg1v0Mnw9xYY8w&amp;index=106">PSX</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDmKe5a4hSM&amp;list=PLldM0Bch-d1niwDojuVKf3OPAR8ve9a6E&amp;index=131">PSP</a>]</sup></p>
<p>As Zalbag is a man who’s job doesn’t really have much to do with mental processing, however, he still needs to have some additional clues carefully chewed up for him and regurgitated into his mouth like a hapless baby bird. The Church (which is very evil and full of demons) obliges him in this, coaxing Dycedarg into a conversation that Zalbag overhears in which it comes out that the poison on the battlefield was mosfungus--a toxic mushroom that in non-gaseous form just happens to produce the exact same symptoms that Dad Beoulve had when he died. It is mentioned at this point that poison just happens to be one of Dycedarg’s favorite hobbies and that you can also perform an amateur forensic investigation in order to determine if somebody has been mosfungused. Bizarrely enough, mosfungus only grows on the graves of people who died of too much mosfungus, so it should be that hard to pop over to the churchyard and check things out if you suspect a mosfungusing has transpired.<sup>[Let's Play: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk4I3pqgCUM&amp;list=PLqgujxwvSPdS_hIogu0Wg1v0Mnw9xYY8w&amp;index=117">PSX</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJkUxTzjT88&amp;list=PLldM0Bch-d1niwDojuVKf3OPAR8ve9a6E&amp;index=139">PSP</a>]</sup></p>
<p><span class="imdycedarg02">Almost as awful as an actual goat.</span>Zalbag pops over to the churchyard with a fungus identification specialist and is told--yeah--there's some mosfungus all over his dad’s grave.<sup>[Let's Play: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOoKHp5wkss&amp;list=PLqgujxwvSPdS_hIogu0Wg1v0Mnw9xYY8w&amp;index=124">PSX</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2okv9aGsFQ&amp;list=PLldM0Bch-d1niwDojuVKf3OPAR8ve9a6E&amp;index=147">PSP</a>]</sup> Grief stricken, he returns to Igros for some revenge-driven fratricide, which Dycedarg doesn’t take kindly to. They have a big melodramatic family fight, with Ramza showing up to help out in a scene that is directly analogous to a certain popular gif featuring <em>Community</em> character Troy Barnes walking into a flame-covered room with a pizza. Dycedarg gives some big villain speeches, claiming that he only did all this scheming for them (well...more for Zalbag, really; Ramza can go choke) and that they are being fools not to fall in line with ambitions. He then dies, and in accordance with the Church’s own, higher order schemes, a magical artifact in his possession turns him into a demon called Adremelk, which looks like a very mean goat, being associated with the astrological sign Capricorn.<sup>[Let's Play: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB1j9z_cRSY&amp;list=PLqgujxwvSPdS_hIogu0Wg1v0Mnw9xYY8w&amp;index=126&amp;t=22s">PSX</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKNmRYzoK7U&amp;list=PLldM0Bch-d1niwDojuVKf3OPAR8ve9a6E&amp;index=165">PSP</a>]</sup></p>
<p>As Adremelk, Dycedarg confesses to his dad’s murder, incinerates Zalbag, and then dies again in yet another boss battle with Ramza. In a sad twist of fate, Ramza will also have to kill Zalbag all over again as he gets un-incinerated and turned into a sad zombie. This course of events--in which poor Ramza ends up being served a double helping of fratricide at a fratricide party he didn’t even want to attend--proves to be the end of House Beoulve.</p><hr/>
<p><br/>
<strong>Ruvelia Atkascha (<a href="https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Louveria_Atkascha">[Wiki Article]</a>; b. January 20, starts game at age 27):</strong>  Ruvelia has a lot less extensive plot information to go off of, as she does not actually ever appear in the game, and everything she does is communicated via bar rumors, her biography entry, cut scene exposition, and people talking about her in the midst of all the big political speeches they continually make. Despite this criminal neglect of her character, Ruvelia honestly seems like a pretty cool lady conceptually. In a game where absolutely every other female character is either a victimized teenage girl or an honor-bound lady knight, it’s really nice to know that somewhere in Ivalice there is a woman who is ostensibly engaging in all the political backstabbery and high villainy that the dudes get to enjoy.</p>
<p>Ruvelia is the sister of Duke Larg, so she presumably is native to Gallione, which is where all the other cool kids in this game seem to hang out. She was married to Omdoria III at the age of twenty, becoming queen in the process, and she thereafter bore him two sons that died in infancy. One year before the events of the game, she gave birth to Orinas, who frustratingly just came into existence right after Omdoria formally adopted his sister Ovelia such that he had a legal heir to whom he could pass the throne. Apparently, the king had assumed that Ruvelia was not going to be forthcoming with any live babies soon and wanted to have a backup.</p>
<p><span class="imgrc">About as close as we get to in-game Ruvelia content.</span>Omdoria III is generally characterized as a sickly idiot who is bad at managing the country, and Ruvelia therefore spends a significant part of his reign managing for him, executing people who annoy her and generally letting her brother do whatever the hell he wants. This does not make Ivalice’s High Council very happy, as they do not like being executed, and they generally support Ovelia as the future heir and Goltanna as her regent. In a big speech given by supreme bad guy Vormav Tingel, it is revealed that the Council was so very unhappy with her shenanigans, in fact, that they murdered her first two sons. Earlier, before her ascension to the throne, they also replaced Princess Ovelia (who appears to have <em> actually </em> died in infancy) with a surrogate child who would be raised in her place to provide their faction with a claimant to the throne. To complicate things even further, Vormav also relates that there are suspicions that Orinas is not actually Omdoria’s son, as Omdoria is too frail and presumably bad at the sex to have one. He suggests that Larg arranged for Ruvelia to hook up with somebody else to make sure she was able to give birth to a future king.<sup>[Let's Play: <a href="https://youtu.be/S4qiQDSN3TQ">PSX</a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/urtuPQkGPgc">PSP</a>]</sup></p>
<p>Around the beginning of the game, Omdoria III kicks the bucket, Larg is made regent, Orinas is made king, and everyone is very very tense as this does not seem to be a stable political situation at all. Ruvelia keeps executing anyone who gives her guff, exiles and possibly poisons her mother-in-law, and is generally not nice.</p>
<p>Things spill over into a succession war when all of those aforementioned schemes involving Dycedarg and Delita go down. Delita, who wins the initial round of schemery, manages to drag Ovelia to Zeltennia unharmed, where he reveals that there was some manner of plot to kill her on the part of Larg’s camp. He does this by getting one of Goltanna’s men (or possibly a dude pretending to be one of Goltanna’s men... I don't actually know) to confess that Goltanna’s chancellor Gelwan is actually an agent of Larg and Ruvelia and that he commanded a bunch of dudes to murder the princess. He then stabs Gelwan in front of everyone assembled to hear this confession, leaving it really ambiguous as to whether the poor guy was actually involved in all these conspiracies at all. This endears Delita to Goltanna and also sets the stage for the opening of the war, as Goltanna’s forces move to formally arrest Ruvelia and raid the capital.<sup>[Let's Play: <a href="https://youtu.be/WSMjAoAAEhQ">PSX</a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/KKJARmSJ3xE">PSP</a>]</sup></p>
<p>The capital gets raided, Ruvelia gets captured, and all in told this only kills about 400,000 Ivalicians. Orinas ends up faring better than his mother and is spirited away to the neighboring country of Romanda to live in exile. Ruvelia then spends most of the rest of the game as a prisoner of Goltanna’s forces, being held at Fort Bethla. There is an attempt to siege the castle and rescue her, but this just so happens to be the battle mentioned above in Dycedarg’s section wherein her brother gets stabbed to death by Dycedarg, everyone gets poisoned, and Zalbag becomes really shitty at leading further military campaigns on account of having to go mushroom hunting. As a result, nobody’s really in great shape to liberate her from Zeltennian captivity.</p>
<p>After the battle, Ruvelia is also  just mentioned as having… mysteriously disappeared, and she stays disappeared throughout the end of the game. As her age counter increments, one can assume that she’s still alive, but the narrative just flat out drops her and doesn’t bother to tell you what befalls her, her son, or her claims on the throne. This is no doubt owing to the fact that the political plot has been largely eclipsed by the JRPG “Let’s kill God!” plot, and nobody really cares anymore what happens to this game’s tragically underutilized bad girl.  </p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>A Note on Translations, with Links to Transcripts and Let's Plays</strong>
</p>
<p>Something worth noting about <em>Final Fantasy Tactics</em> is that there are two very different translations of the game into English and that a lot of people have very pointed opinions about them. The original PSX translation, written when the game was first released outside of Japan in 1998, is notorious for being confusing and choppy. It contains numerous inconsistencies in its grammar and spelling, and a number of lines read as nonsensical or unintentionally humorous in English. The PSP translation, made for the remaster of the game titled <em>Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions</em> is much more polished and easy to follow for English readers but is frequently criticized for its use of overly flowery faux Early Modern English. It also changes the spelling of numerous proper nouns within the game, which means that people discussing the game are often aware of and may use multiple versions of character, location, and organization names.</p>
<p>To be upfront, I feel that both translations are inescapably bad, but I prefer the PSX one. While I am not fluent in Japanese, my general impression is that the <em>War of the Lions</em> translation tends to take fairly wide liberties with the original text, and it seems to do so in the interest of making things sound like what Americans think Shakespeare sounds like instead of trying to tease out something native to the original feeling of the Japanese. I'm ultimately a bit magpieish regarding which elements of which translation I use to inform my reading of canon, as the original PSX one is sometimes too cringe-worthy to stomach, but I tend to shy away from interpretations supported only by the PSP text.</p>
<p>There are transcripts of the the <a href="http://hakuteikoubou.skr.jp/storage/FFT_script.html">original Japanese script</a>, the <a href="https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/197339-final-fantasy-tactics/faqs/14169">original PSX translation</a>, and the <a href="https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/937312-final-fantasy-tactics-the-war-of-the-lions/faqs/50913">PSP translation</a> available online, and if anybody ever gets as obsessively into this game as I am, they may also wish to check out <a href="https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/197339-final-fantasy-tactics/faqs/48627">Sugnuf's fan translation</a> of the game, which manages a fairly nice balance between the two official English ones but does change a bunch of proper nouns <em>yet again</em>. For the purposes of Let's Play footage, I've selected the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8npodwvEfI0lxul-EapEJQ">Final Fantasy Tactics Complete Playthrough and Transcript</a> for PSX scenes and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLldM0Bch-d1niwDojuVKf3OPAR8ve9a6E">Eirlaron's playthrough</a> for the PSP scenes.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Richer Political Narratives Through Fucking</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Now that we've established who Dycedarg and Ruvelia are and--in the process--described a good portion of the very convoluted political plot of <em>Final Fantasy Tactics, </em>I'd like to suggest one very specific reason that they should definitely hook up, as this will be the bulk of my basic justification for this ship. From there, I will grasp at so many straws to provide broad suggestions for why these two characters might have some additional points of dramatic synergy that would make this fucking-of-necessity--if not a particularly loving affair--at the very least something that brings together two people with some shared interests, histories, and griefs.</p><hr/>
<p>
  <b>On Why Dycedarg Beoulve Is the Man to Call if You Need Somebody to Fuck Your Sister</b>
</p>
<p>There is one pressing and immediate explanation as to why Dycedarg and Ruvelia should fuck, and that is because Ruvelia desperately needs a baby to continue in her position of power. While it’s certainly possible that Vormav’s claim that she slutted her way into a viable heir is a mean piece of slander and that Orinas is actually Omdoria III’s son, this is <em>boring</em>. It is much more interesting if her brother is actually providing her with a sexual partner to beget a prince, as it leads to more drama and more schemes in this beautifully drama- and scheme-filled game.</p>
<p>The only viable candidates for Orinas’ father in this scenario are the dudes on Larg’s side, which include Larg himself, Dycedarg, Zalbag, maaaaybe Gelwan, and Joe Queenfucker the unnamed hypothetical queenfucking NPC. Even if it seems very probable that we are intended to assume Joe Queenfucker did the deed here, this is also boring and we should ignore it. While it is possible the Largs just did as other high fantasy sibling pairs based on the historical House of Lancaster did and fucked one another, that seems like it stands a decent chance of resulting in babies with birth defects, which is less than ideal when you need a live heir asap. Gelwan possibly isn’t even on Larg’s side (Delita killed him before that was really sorted out), and if he is, he’s obviously spending most of his time in Zeltennia pretending to be on Goltanna’s side and is probably too busy to multitask such that he can bang the queen. Zalbag is around Ruvelia’s age and possibly grew up alongside her, which could form a vague basis for a relationship, but Zalbag also wins the dubious distinction of being the least completely terrible human being in his faction. As a complete square whose only seeming loves are the military and JRPG Jesus (or as I like to call him/her JRPJesus), he probably isn’t up for some casual adultery-treason.</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>This leaves Dycedarg, who absolutely--no questions asked--would fuck anyone’s sister for political gain at the drop of a hat. Please, just look at the last chapter's picture of him. He is 110% the person you call up at 3 AM when you are Bestrada Larg and you need some emergency sister fucking to go down such that your family’s claims on the crown might be preserved. Seriously. If he could transcend time and reality, Dycedarg Beoulve would probably pop out of your 1998 CRT monitor to fuck your actual sister right now in front of you. </p>
<p><span class="imdycedarg03">
The evidence speaks for itself.</span> On top of this, if Orinas is Dycedarg’s son, this makes all of his many many political schemes take on a new dimension of delicious schemery, as he would actually legitimately be poised to place a Beoulve (sort of) on the Ivalician throne. On the level of interpersonal drama, it also adds another magnificent layer of potential daddy issues to complete clusterfuck of familial dysfunction that is House Beoulve. He’d be entering fatherhood just as he literally kills and replaces his father! He’d be usurping his childhood friend’s position at the same time he adulterates his bloodline! Having Dycedarg and Ruvelia fuck on its most basic level--even before we consider anything to do with their personal compatibility--makes the game’s political plot instantly more rich and intense! </p>
<p>
  <em> TL;DR: Dycedarg is the top tier candidate to be Orinas’ dad should Orinas be a bastard, and having Dycedarg and Ruvelia fuck to produce a viable heir for political purposes makes the entire game more fun and cool! </em>
</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b>Age Gaps in House Beoulve and My Conspiratorial Theories About Dycedarg’s Mommy Issues</b>
</p>
<p>But anyway, let’s actually talk angst and pathos and personal compatibility now--by which I mean, let’s talk about something completely different and nitpick over math! </p>
<p>I’m going to veer wildly far into the realm of personal headcanon right now and go on a lengthy tangent as to <em> what the fuck is up </em> with the sibling spacing in House Beoulve. If one bothers to look at all the bio entries for the Beoulve siblings, one will find that at the start of the game, Dycedarg is 37, Zalbag is 28, Ramza is 16, and Alma is 15. As the fact that Delita Hyral’s little sister is only 3 months younger than him attests,<sup><a href="#_ftn4" id="_ftnref4" name="_ftnref4">[1]</a></sup> I’m sure that whomever wrote these things really wasn’t actually thinking through the implications of these numbers. However, given that House Beoulve is a super important noble family that has been producing heroes for 300 years and given that the four kids in the game seem to be the last generation of it, I feel there’s a story we should be telling about those age gaps even if one wasn’t intended.</p>
<p>Basically, if you’re Balbanes and you are the only Beoulve capable of passing down the family name, you should be really super concerned about producing as many bouncing baby Beoulves as you are able to produce. This should be especially true in an era of perpetual war and occasional plague where you can realistically assume that one or two of your kids are potentially going to be ground into so much hamburger by the Ordallian war machine. The fact that it takes this man nearly a full <em> decade </em> to get two legitimate heirs, however, seems like it’s at odds with that imperative. I find it doubtful that the nine year age gap between Dycdedarg and Zalbag was a result of Ma and Pa Beoulve using some manner of reliable medieval birth control because they decided they didn’t want to have two teenagers to manage at once. Given how precarious House Beoulve’s future would be with one heir and no spares, it’s not too terribly hard to imagine that other attempts were made to have a baby between Dicky and Zalbs. The net result of any such attempts, however, is zero live babies in that nine year gap.</p>
<p>There’s <em> a lot </em> of ways you can imagine that going, but none of them seem like they are particularly happy for Mama Beoulve, who is not with us by the time the game actually takes place and whose existence is only implied by her sons’ existence. We don’t know what she was like; we don’t know her name; we don’t know what she (presumably) died of. We only know that she was there at some point, bore two sons, and then faded into the same state of non-existence that every other mother does in this narrative that is ostensibly about a succession war.</p>
<p>
  <span class="imdycedarg04"><br/>
<br/>
</span>
</p>
<p>Despite being a complete non-entity, however, I think Lady Beoulve is a great launching point from which we can add some delicious angst to her kids via the magic of fanworks. Dycedarg already clearly has one half of an Oedipus Complex down to a T; what I’d like to suggest is that one of the ways to make everyone’s favorite parricidal goatboy a more compelling and multi-dimensional character is to round that up to a whole ass Oedipus Complex and give him some neuroses about his presumably dead mother who was very shitty at making babies. This is also a great way to bake in some further animosity towards Ramza, whose mom (or Momza, as I like to call her)<sup><a href="#_ftn3" id="_ftnref3" name="_ftnref3">[2]</a></sup> was really great at making babies and popped out two incredibly cute and not-evil bastards in the span of eighteen months. </p>
<p>Also, if we want to get really far afield into the realm of barely supported headcanoning, I might suggest that a kid who grew up watching his mother suffer through constant miscarriages, stillbirths, and/or dead infants might eventually osmose a thing or two about midwifery along the way. Part of midwifery, of course, is herbal medicine, which as we all know is a gateway drug to… <em> poisons. </em> It’s really sort of weird that Dycedarg’s just a guy people know has “poison” as a hobby (or so Rofel, the demon-artifact-distributing Church official, seems to indicate), and it would be neat if there were some personal reason for this beyond him just being an entity suffused in evil vizier energy.</p>
<p>Lastly, and this is the big big takeaway that needs to come from this meandering segue into bizarre speculation about non-existent moms, Dycedarg having had some formative experience with a mother subject to marital strife, sterility, and/or reproductive misfortunes would really set him up superbly for some grade A fucked-uped-ness should he get involved with a woman whose adult life has been largely defined by childbearing and infanticide. </p>
<p>
  <em> TL;DR: Papa Beoulve’s family planning strategy doesn’t make any damn sense, and it’s not too hard to imagine that Dycedarg’s mom had a sad time of things over the nine years it took her to produce him and Zalbag. </em>
</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b>Ruvelia’s Non-Theoretical Issues as a Mommy</b>
</p>
<p>So yeah… about Ruvelia, childbearing, and infanticide. I think it really needs to be reiterated that for all the flak she gets as an evil slut queen who is slutting about being evil, the game straight up confirms that the Ivalician government murdered her two infant sons. Given how much of the actual plot of <em> Final Fantasy Tactics </em> is just dudes with whom we’re supposed to sympathize as they make horrifically bad decisions in the wake of their sisters’ deaths, I feel it’s very unfair that Ruvelia’s familial drama is just a vague, handwaved backdrop for everyone else’s tragedy. Also, not to hop aboard some imaginary “House Larg did nothing wrong” train, but Ruvelia’s faction legitimately has the best claim to the throne. Ovelia is a fake, and even if Orinas is a bastard (and he <em> is </em>because I said so), he is still more directly related to the royal family than anyone else on account of Ruvelia and Omdoria having been first cousins. Whomever his dad is, his grandad was still a legitimate Ivalician king.</p>
<p>Ruvelia then is--all things considered--mother to the rightful king of Ivalice, and if she is complicit in a plot to murder Ovelia, it may be argued that she is doing so in the interests of keeping the people <em> responsible for her children’s deaths </em> out of power. It really sucks for Ovelia, but given that everyone in every faction in Ivalice seems to be betraying two or three of their friends before breakfast and assassinating a sack full of puppies before dinner, Ruvelia isn’t <em> uniquely </em> terrible in this regard. Also, while we are told that everyone’s willingness to sacrifice Ovelia is <em> very bad </em>--and it <em>is</em>--we are never invited to dwell on the fact that her situation arises from the badness of a similar sacrifice of innocents. The nameless, unseen princes didn’t deserve to be murdered any more than the named, visible princess before us. Elsewhere, when other characters (ex: Wiegraf, Delita, Meliadoul, etc..) do wicked or misguided things in relation to people they love dying, the narrative seems to ask for our sympathy. Ruvelia and her dead children, however, remain abstractions to us, and it does not seem that we are expected to care about the mother at the center of this war who has spent one third of her married life bearing children who are murdered to keep her out of political power.</p>
<p>Assuming you want to assign some headcanons involving reproduction-related trauma and angst to Dycedarg (and why wouldn't you?), the self-evident reproductive angst/trauma baked into Ruvelia’s narrative provides an immediate opportunity to have the characters connect on a level that goes beyond the necessities of their cool political machinations. Even if you don’t, it is still inescapable that both characters come from severely messed up families and that both are attempting to navigate the bleak political world in which they operate by manipulating familial ties. On top of this, if you believe the account that Ruvelia poisoned her mother-in-law, they are both characters whose manipulation of those ties involves poisoning the shit out of the inconvenient older generation.</p>
<p>
  <em> TL;DR: Ruvelia’s babies were flat out fucking murdered, and the game does not seem to invite us to sympathize. Maybe, however, we should sympathize--or we should at least imagine another terrible human being with fucked-to-hell familial issues being in some sympathy with her. </em>
</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b>...And Here’s to Poisoning the Shit Out of the Inconvenient Older Generation</b>
</p>
<p>At this point, I’d like to take a step back and point out that maybe… maaaaaybeee… killing members of Ivalice’s inconvenient older generation is--if not admirable--perhaps a little understandable. Something that the game presents us with and then continually glosses over is that Ivalice was, in fact, the <em> aggressor </em>in the Fifty Years War. If you go back to the very first missions of the game and read through three pages of bar rumors, you will learn that the reason the Fifty Years War happened was that Denamunda II (Orinas’ great grandfather) just decided to tell the neighboring country he was their king now and went over to invade them. While technically he was sort of doing this to return the Ordallian territory of Zelmonia to sovereign rule, it really needs to be emphasized that the whole economy-collapsing clusterfuck of war that precedes the game was absolutely Ivalice’s fault.</p>
<p>The game sets us up to be horrified by Balbanes’ murder and to think he’s a swell guy who embodied the lost chivalry of his household that it now falls to Ramza to reclaim. However, I think we might want to think about what the chivalry Balbanes (and his BFF T. G. Cid) actually stands for, because it was their knightly conduct that supported a ruinous war of aggression. The generation preceding the older Beoulves and the Largs gets a lot of credit, and to be fair, characters like Balbanes and Orlandu are not actually corrupt and self-serving, which is pretty dang rare in Ivalice. However, being honest and well-intentioned doesn’t really erase the fact that they supported a series of monarchs who led a disastrous conflict. It also doesn't erase the fact that--for all <em> they </em> were totally nice fellows who probably played by the rules--this conflict involved a fair number of Ivalician war crimes. Gafgarion--who was a well known figure in the Fifty Years War--is noted in his bio for having to be ousted from his knightly order on account of his “brutal fighting style,” and it's pretty clear from his attitudes as a mercenary that he probably razed a few villages in his day. Gustav Margueriff, whether you trust his bio in the PSX original or his bio in the PSP port, was involved in a scandal involving some combination of rape, looting, and/or massacres when he was in the order that Balbanes commanded.</p>
<p><span class="imglc">It's sad, but is it really THAT sad?</span>The narrative hammers home every few seconds that the present-day ruling classes are corrupt. Dycedarg and Larg are trying to backstab their way to the regency; Goltanna is overtaxing his serfs while they starve in the wake of plague and famine; Duke Barinten of Fovoham is a depraved mass murderer and rapist; and the royal family themselves--even with as little as they appear in game--are characterized as either ineffectual or ruthless. <em> Final Fantasy Tactics, </em>however, absolutely refuses to draw the connection in which we might consider that the awful state of the nobility is owing to the fact that men like Balbanes and Orlandu propped it up. We aren’t asked to consider that maybe men turned away from being exemplars of knightly virtue because the game’s exemplary knights helped them to do so.</p>
<p>Nor are we really asked to consider what growing up in a state of perpetual war really does to characters like the Largs or the older Beoulve kids. Even though they have the privileges of nobility and aren’t as royally screwed over by the Fifty Years War as people like the Folles siblings were,<sup><a href="#_ftn1" id="_ftnref1" name="_ftnref1">[3]</a></sup> characters like Dycedarg and Ruvelia were born into a conflict they didn’t start at a point when it was beginning to shift from an expansionist act of conquest to a war where Ivalice stood a real chance of being invaded. They’re both pretty thoroughly awful (or at least Dycedarg is and Ruvelia seems to be), but they also came of age under thoroughly awful circumstances, where morality was not--perhaps--as clear cut as it was for men of Balbanes’ generation or boys of Ramza’s. Most of the principals of the game are teenagers, who came of age just as the Fifty Years War was ending. The fact that they can envision a better world might not just be because they are all inherently better human beings who make good JRPG protagonists; I think one can read the optimism of most of Ramza’s age cohort as being shaped by their freedom from the grind of the era of war that older characters had to endure.</p>
<p>As sad and moving as his death is for his not awful children, I frankly do not shed all that many tears for Balbanes. Everyone in Ivalice spends way too much time telling you he was the best general and/or dad ever and there seems to be very little evidence of that given the state of his country and family. All of his nobility seems to have been in the service of an ignoble war, and his two eldest sons (and everyone else their age) were left to finish that war for him and endure all the consequences of doing so.  This is in much the same vein that I do not care that Ruvelia is rumored to murder noblemen who look at her funny, given that she was barely free of being a teenager when she took the throne and her job came to be making babies for council members to assassinate. Whatever her relationship to her unnamed mother-in-law was, I would find it very believable that the widow of Denamunda IV (Omdoria III’s father)<sup><a href="#_ftn2" id="_ftnref2" name="_ftnref2">[4]</a></sup> was part of the same set that were enabling the conflict setting the stage for so much of the game's miseries.</p>
<p>Does all this vague sense that maybe Dycedarg’s dad and Ruvelia’s mother-in-law aren’t such great people <em> actually </em> justify their deaths? No. However, <em> Final Fantasy Tactics </em>obviously wants you to have a soft spot for rat bastards who are intent on burning shit down; Delita Hyral would not be the popular character he is if this were not true. I am merely taking that impulse further in suggesting that we celebrate characters of a rattier and more bastardly disposition than even the game’s rat-bastard-in-chief: that there’s joy to be found in watching the generation most screwed over by Ivalice’s war of aggression wrecking Ivalice as aggressively and monstrously as they are able. </p>
<p>
  <em> TL:DR: Despite being told a million times that characters like Balbanes Beoulve are really super great, the evidence points to them really being super great in the service of something really super awful (i.e. The Fifty Years War). Dycedarg and Ruvelia are part of a broad generation of people whose lives have been defined by a war foisted on them by their parents and grandparents, and having them deliver a big fat “fuck you” to their elders via the generous application of poison has the potential to be genuinely cathartic and compelling.  </em>
</p><hr/>
<p>To sum up, the most basic and self-evident reason Dycedarg/Ruvelia is a great pairing is because Orinas being a secret Beoulve is wicked cool. From there, however, I think there's a number of similarities one can wring out of the characters' two narratives if one tries very hard (and I clearly try ever so hard), and those are all an excellent basis for both giving these villains added pathos and dousing them in delicious emotional awkwardity as they fuck for the crown. It's not just that both of them are characterized as manipulative, politically ruthless poisoners who would probably fuck a piece of cheese if it brought them closer to a stable position of power, it's that both of them, while fucking for power, also have the potential to explore issues of parenthood, reproductive angst, and <em>FFT's </em>larger themes of generational debt and divide. Whether you envision a relationship between them as detached, friendly, hateful, or even sort of loving, it provides such an intensely potent way to make them, the themes they touch upon, and the world they inhabit all more interesting and dynamic.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <span class="small"><sup><a href="#_ftnref4" id="_ftn4" name="_ftn4">[1]</a></sup> While Delita is 16 and Teta is 15 at the opening of game, Teta's age <em>will</em> increment to 16 if her birthday on February 15 occurs before she dies in the game's first chapter. Given that Delita's birthday is listed as being November 25, Ma Hyral appears to have a gestational period a little longer than a domestic guinea pig.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span class="small"><sup><a href="#_ftnref3" id="_ftn3" name="_ftn3">[2]</a></sup> Unlike Lady Beoulve, Momza actually has some information about her that actually exists, namely that her last name was Ruglia (or Lugria if you play on the PSP). She is also referred to as Balbanes' "paramour" in the <em>War of the Lions</em> game manual, which--along with one diss to that effect by Cardinal Draclau--forms the basis for me continually calling Ramza and Alma bastards.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span class="small"><sup><a href="#_ftnref1" id="_ftn1" name="_ftn1">[3]</a></sup> If you aren't familiar with the canon, they're those starving revolutionaries who kidnap the Marquis Elmdor. Life is not very kind to them; one of them dies and the other sells his soul to the Church and then becomes a demonic sheep.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span class="small"><sup><a href="#_ftnref2" id="_ftn2" name="_ftn2">[4]</a></sup> If for some reason you've been following the genealogy very closely, you might notice that there is no Denamunda III. Good job for noticing. This footnote sadly cannot explain why that is, as this number skipping between Ivalician monarchs is absolutely never explained.</span>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Further Ideas to Consider</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Okay, so hopefully I’ve made it clear that A) Dycedarg Beoulve absolutely should be fucking a character most people forget is even in the game because it makes the plot ever so much sexier B) if you are a subtext-grubbing lunatic like myself, there are tons of things you could read as giving some spark of meaningful human connection to the characters beyond the way in which their union results in more narrative complexity.</p>
<p>This section of this manifesto is just throwing out some more specific ideas as to how somebody might actually develop fanworks along these lines: how one could hunt through this beigey, sad JRPG universe looking for specific opportunities to add depth to these characters. Here, instead of giving the broad outline as to how Dycedarg and Ruvelia might be elevated from being one-dimensional villains to being two-dimensional villains who fuck, I want to get into some general opportunities for angst, drama, and emotionally awkward heir-providing trysts.</p>
<p>If you've read a prior ship manifesto about this game (and I'm going to keep <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/20874131/">linking to it</a> just in case you want to), you might notice that this section is focused more on broad fields of potential synergy from which narratives might be generated instead of offering a set of discrete scenarios in which the characters could conceivably get together. This is because unlike Wiegraf/Zalbag, who need a lot of convoluted explanations as to how they actually <em>could</em> meet and fuck, Dycedarg/Ruvelia have one very specific and reasonably feasible scenario that I feel makes a relationship between them a great idea. As such, I'm more interested as to how a Dycedarg/Ruvelia scenario allows one to look at either of these underdeveloped characters (or the political clusterfuck that surrounds them) and provide them with more nuance and depth.</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b>Again, All the Cool Kids Grow Up In Gallione</b>
</p>
<p>The first thing that should really be addressed is that Dycedarg Beoulve is mentioned as being Bestrada Larg’s childhood friend, and this means that whatever path led Dycedarg to shove a dagger between his ribs potentially started very very early on. As I mentioned before, Zalbag and Ruvelia are roughly the same age as one another, and it would make perfect narrative sense for them to at least be acquainted, given that everyone is growing up in Gallione and their two brothers are apparent besties.</p>
<p>What’s that? Four children separated into two sibling sets of different social classes? All freely associating? Do you know what this sets things up for? </p>
<p>Dramatic. Fucking. Parallels. </p>
<p>
  <span class="imdycedarg05">
    Just draw some lines.
  </span>
</p>
<p>There’s so much rich potential here to take whatever one decides is going on with the older Beoulves and the Largs and to interrelate it to what is much more explicitly shown in game as going on with the younger Beoulves and the Hyrals--especially when there’s so many weird ways to tie one character to another. Ruvelia, like Delita, marries into the monarchy. Dycedarg and Alma both get possessed by demons. Zalbag and Teta both end up as that tragically dead character in a boss battle that you waste Phoenix Downs on in the vain hope that they might just come back. Alternately, Dycedarg and Delita become stab-happy Machiavellian bastards, Zalbag and Alma are both characterized by their pious nature, Bestrada and Ramza both suffer a shocking disillusionment as regards their position in the world and their relationship to their friends. </p>
<p>You could keep going. It's easy to find points of comparison when there are two equal-numbered groups of characters you've been asked to compare. The point isn't that every reading is completely brilliant but rather that you can take the characters the game asks us to care about and bounce off of their narratives to add depth and drama to all these barely defined, mostly terrible people. Actually imbuing Dycedarg and Ruvelia with childhoods and pasts allows one to explore connections they might have had at Igros and how they might parallel connections between characters whose motivations and complexities we are actually invited to explore.</p>
<p>How did they regard one another growing up? What did they think of their respective stations and futures during a time of war and uncertainty? If Ruvelia, like other young noblewomen in the game, was sent off to be raised by monks at some point, how does that impact things? Dycedarg is also ten years older than Ruvelia, and exploring their intertwined but not actually parallel childhoods at Igros would be a great launching point for exploring how emotionally weird a union between them might be.</p>
<p>Also…</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b>Let’s Talk About Their Siblings</b>
</p>
<p>Absolutely every human being in <em> Final Fantasy Tactics</em>, should they have a sibling, will have their life be very much defined in relation to that sibling. It’s a rule; I’m pretty certain that the incomprehensible tutorial guy probably tells you about it in one of the lectures you inevitably skipped.</p>
<p><span class="imglc">
    A very real screenshot of the tutorial you absolutely didn't read.</span>In any event, if we’ve decided (as we obviously should) that Ruvelia and Dycedarg hooked up to make Orinas, we should definitely definitely consider how this union plays out in relation to Bestrada and Zalbag. With Bestrada, it’s obvious that this scenario would involve him arranging for his sister to sleep with his best friend, which is absolutely a thing that everyone in this mess should feel weird about. Who in this conspiracy would make the pick? Does Dycedarg just saunter by in his resplendent awfulness and tell his buddy that he should let him bang his sister for reasons? Does Larg come up with this brilliant plan of his own volition and just tell the two people closest to him that they should fuck now? Does Ruvelia decide that maybe she can finally live out her dreams of hooking up with the thoroughly shady son of her dad’s retainer? Any way this pans out, Ruvelia and Bestrada have to broach the topic of how the the latter is handling the former's sex life, and that is just a super uncomfy thing. I personally think it's the exact sort of uncomfy thing that should be explored in awkward detail for the sake of generating more family drama in an already family-drama filled game. Also, Bestrada’s take on the rest of Ruvelia’s only briefly described life would be fascinating—even without the Dycedarg/Ruvelia narrative I so crave. How does he feel about his dead nephews? How does he feel about his living nephew? What does it mean for this overlooked man--whose character is presently defined by about three lines of dialogue and a terrible haircut—to be one of <em> Final Fantasy Tactics </em> many brothers desperately trying to rescue their sisters?</p>
<p>Meanwhile, you have Zalbag. In a Dycedarg/Ruvelia scenario, he is probably not aware of any affair or is actively ignoring it to the best of his ability--given that he seems to have the perceptive skills of a slightly moistened piece of cardboard. Nevertheless, his position as the one person in this quartet who would most probably be ignorant of any baby making hijinx opens up fascinating possibilities in and of itself. Zalbag is unique in that he’s the only person in Gallione with any clout who also has something vaguely akin to moral standards. Having him be the straight man in the midst of a high stakes conspiracy has all sorts of great potential, both for exploring the other three involved parties in relation to him and for generally just making everything more clandestine and convoluted as everyone has to hide all their treasonous fuckery from their faction's general. How might his piety/ethics come into play as it becomes more and more apparent that <em> something </em>is up with all of his allies? How might he bring himself to overlook or forgive his brother’s transgressions enough to still trust him throughout the actual course of the game? How might he interact with Ruvelia, a woman who--as has been mentioned a few times--has relatively a good chance of being somebody he grew up with?</p>
<p>And that last point is one from which you can pivot to the other great set of potentialities that involving Bestrada and Zalbag in a Dycedarg/Ruvelia narrative offers. You can make a love triangle! You can make a love quadrangle! You can throw in a fifth character, make a love pentangle and summon a love Lucavi! </p>
<p>What if Ruvelia isn’t actually satisfied with the Beoulve she ends up fucking and would much rather be having an affair with the boy next door who grew up to be a war hero? What if Bestrada’s unwavering trust in his evil chancellor with a well-defined hourglass figure comes from something more than a place of shared childhood camaraderie? What if we just go all <em> Game of Thrones </em> and throw in some Largcest<sup><a href="#_ftn2" id="_ftnref2" name="_ftnref2">[1]</a></sup> and/or Beoulvecest as a means of underscoring the FFT trend of having everyone be obsessed with their siblings? Did you know that I am not alone in my weird fascination with incredibly niche Larg/Beoulve ships and that somebody actually ships Zalbag/Bestrada? <a href="https://krozinworks.tumblr.com/post/145348792934/so-okay-like-some-background-this-was-my-first">They do.</a> We could even read <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/20874131">that other 10K ship manifesto some handsome devil wrote</a>, determine that Zalbag should definitely be hooking up with peasant-soldier-turned-warrior-priest-turned-sheep-demon Wiegraf Folles, and add a whole additional layer of class dynamics and political drama to a scenario already invested in maximizing political drama to the nth degree.</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b>Politics, Poisoning, and Parental Neuroses</b>
</p>
<p>To go back to the previous chapter--and to finally namedrop the title--something else I suggest one might use to explore a Dycedarg/Ruvelia scenario is how they actually tackle all the intergenerational issues I mentioned in the previous chapter.</p>
<p>The most straightforward answer here to how they do this is <em>poison</em>. They navigate their conflicts and tensions regarding their elders by poisoning them, and poison is legit a cool thing to bond over. Face it, mosfungus has a completely stupid means of reproducing itself that would not at all map onto real world fungi, but when you heard about that "only grows on dead bodies" thing, you thought it was metal as fuck. Poison is awesome. 
</p>
<p>Bestrada obviously seems to know Dycedarg poisoned his dad. Was the whole Larg family in on it? Was there any overlap between the plan to poison Balbanes and the plan to poison the Queen Mother (if that happened)? Denamunda IV (Omdoria III's father who was apparently a semi-effectual king) was rumored to also be poisoned. Does anyone have thoughts on that? What about Ruvelia's dead sons? What about whatever prior Duke Larg it was who died in time for Bestrada and his lamentable hair to inherit the duchy of Gallione? There are so many potential poisonings in this game, and while I don't think you can hold Dycedarg and/or Ruvelia responsible for them all, I think these two definitely deserve as much poison-related character exploration as one can possibly wring from the lethal politics around them.</p>
<p>Seriously, these two crazy kids talking about noxious plants they happen to like in the midst of some torrid, covert affair of political necessity is the exact aesthetic that the non-religious villains in this game need more of. It's the exact aesthetic that more villains everywhere need more of. I can personally think of few things sexier than fucking somebody thoroughly terrible while one talks about how the wrong type of <em>amanita </em>induces organ failure--although your mileage may vary.</p>
<p><span class="imgrc">Dycedarg "Knows A Lot About Poison" Beoulve</span>Outside of the innate sexiness of poison, however, the less straightforward answer as to how they navigate generational issues has a number of possibilities--particularly given that most of what I've said about these characters is my own conspiratorial speculations with only the most slender of bases in actual in-game content. However, I think I one of the few things you can definitively extrapolate about both of these fuckups is that they have severely fucked up families. One is a patricide. One has had multiple children murdered. Even if you don't want to go the route I do and upgrade Dycedarg's Oedipal tendencies to involve his never actually mentioned mother, having these characters relate to one another through their family dysfunction is an absolutely great idea, and it is made all the greater if you are shipping them (as you ought) for reasons of dysfunctional family-making.</p>
<p>How Dycedarg might handle being a father while poisoning his own father to an early grave could be the intense sort of villain introspection we could all use.<sup><a href="#_ftn1" id="_ftnref1" name="_ftnref1">[2]</a></sup> How Ruvelia feels about motherhood and how she navigates the balance between maternal attachment and the political necessity of children is much the same sort of thing.  Having them both work things like this out in relation to one another, where they share an intimacy rooted in childbearing that they cannot share with anyone else, has so much potential to turn into the messy, ugly sort of drama that make villain ships oh so sweet to begin with.</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>Authority, Power, and Ruvelia's Also-Barely-In-The-Game Husband</strong>
</p>
<p>I haven't made much mention of Omdoria III. I could say that this is because he is barely in the game and barely has any character, but in doing so would mark myself a complete hypocrite, given all the motivations and depth I am seemingly willing to assign to Ruvelia. Unlike Ruvelia, it should be noted that he dies insanely early in the narrative, and as a result doesn't have nearly as much room for rich narrative explorations in which he is banging a horrible man doomed to end his days as an evil goat. Still, his ineffectual rule is an important component in why the last several years of the Fifty Years War sucked so hard, why the Lion War happened in the first place, and why his much more competent wife was put in a position of power that made so many people unhappy. If somebody wanted to give this underutilized character the same intense consideration I give his underutilized spouse, I might suggest that its interesting to consider what it's like for him to live in the shadow of his far more competent war hero father, to consider what his relationship is to his sister/adoptive daughter whose narrative is actually presented to us in game, or to consider how he functions as somebody who is simultaneously the most and least powerful man in Ivalice. Also, did I mention he's Bestada and Ruvelia's first cousin? He's also Duke Goltanna's cousin. If some other soul were to play this game and be <em>even more invested</em> in making it about unending familial/political turmoil than I am, there's ample space with which to work.</p>
<p>However, in relation to my claims that his wife should be banging a horrible man doomed to end his days as an evil goat, Omdoria's bizarre position on the political grid-based battle board of Ivalice underscores one of the things I think would be most fun to play with in a Dycedarg/Ruvelia pairing: <em>power dynamics</em>. </p>
<p>Omdoria is at the technical top of the Ivalician pyramid of power, but he's clearly meant to be read as helpless in spite of it. Ruvelia starts the game with functional control over the Ivalican government, but her position depends on her husband continuing to exist or producing some heirs (both of which he seems to be frustratingly bad at doing). Dycedarg really very obviously loves being in control, but in having any sort of relationship with Ruvelia, he would have to cede that control in that she is essentially the head of state. Everyone doing anything at the highest level of Ivalice's government is constantly walking a tightrope as regards what they can and cannot command of others.</p>
<p>And that is really super sexy of everyone, and it should totally be exploited in anything depicting Dicky and Rue here as having some sort of relationship, given how incredibly important considerations of power are to their narratives. What's it like for Ruvelia to cheat on the one man in Ivalice who has obvious, government-sanctioned power over her? What does it mean for Dycedarg, who clearly expects subordination from nearly everyone around him, to have to deal with a woman who is so clearly above him on the social ladder? How do you figure Bestrada into this, who is obviously entangled in whatever hot villainfucking is going on in but must approach said villainfucking without the same degree of intimacy as those who are engaging in it? </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>The Dropped Political Plot (or What the Hell Actually Happens to Ruvelia?)</strong>
</p>
<p>Lastly, what is perhaps the <em>biggest</em> opportunity for exposition relating to either character in fanworks is the question as to what the actual hell happens to the political plot after the game itself inelegantly drops it. <em>Final Fantasy Tactics</em>, being a JRPG crafted in the year of our lord 1998, sadly could not resist the imperative that its final battle involve killing God him/herself. As such, the gritty, complicated politics of the game largely fall away at the end so that you can go boss battle hooded Church cultists and stab JRPJesus.</p>
<p>This is a shame, as the political plot of the game is honestly much more engaging than the religious plot, and it's a massive let down that vast portions of it remain unresolved. While we are told that Delita becomes king on account of marrying Ovelia (as one can apparently just ascend the Ivalician throne by marrying into the matrilineal bloodline), there is no resolution as to what happens to Larg's faction following Dycedarg's death or where the hell Ruvelia ended up. There's no hint in the epilogue that Ruvelia or Orinas ever bothered Delita with their (much more legitimate) claims to the throne, and we certainly aren't asked to speculate as to what happens to Gallione in the absence of the Largs and Beoulves. </p>
<p><span class="imglc">
    Wouldn't it be nice if the game actually cared about this?</span>While you can certainly address all of these gaping plot holes in the absence of Dycedarg/Ruvelia as a ship, interweaving the fates of the two characters provides particularly cool opportunities for looking at the political post-canon fallout as regards both Ivalice and Gallione. The first and foremost plot hole that ought be addressed is the fate of Ruvelia, who--even with as little as we are given about her--doesn't seem the sort of woman to just fade quietly into the background. She also seems like she might just... have some feelings of some sort about her brother getting stabbed trying to rescue her. She would probably, if she knew, also have a few thoughts about his two retainers murdering one another before being transformed into a zombie and a goat.</p>
<p>This is particularly true if the goat was formerly a man she was fucking for political reasons. Examining this super awesome villain ship I'm recommending <em>in retrospect</em> could be a really neato way in which one could hash out out where Ruvelia ended up, what happened to Gallione when all the important people in it died horrifically, and how Delita's successful seizure of power actually played out with regards to all the horrible aristocrats he displaced. Does Ruvelia stay a prisoner of the Nanten? Does she escape to Romanda with her son? Does she end up somewhere else? How the fuck does she handle Delita, who pulled the same basic power play that she did in marrying an easily led royal to seize power? As for Dycedarg, he's obviously very dead by the end of the narrative, having been killed twice. However, having his story explored via a character other than his siblings might allow one to see what his death actually means in insofar as he was a major political figure. Unlike Ramza, who just stumbles into some melodramatic fratricide and then scuttles off to fight his way through the JRPG Vatican, Ruvelia is one of the few living characters who remain who could make make some sense out of all the death at Igros.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <span class="small"><sup><a href="#_ftnref2" id="_ftn2" name="_ftn2">[1]</a></sup> I know I mentioned last chapter that Largcest is a terrible idea (and it is), but I feel it's a slightly less terrible idea when you are just romantically and/or sexually entangled with your brother for reasons of personal drama and are seeing somebody else as regards trying to beget a viable heir to the Ivalician throne.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span class="small"><sup><a href="#_ftnref1" id="_ftn1" name="_ftn1">[2]</a></sup> We can go even deeper and consider Orinas as a half-royal bastard in relation to Ramza as a half-commoner bastard, and how Dycedarg might feel about making bastards as his bastard-making father dies.</span>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Fanworks</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Now that you know who these two terrible human beings are, have been informed as to why they absolutely should hook up for reasons of narrative drama, and have been subjected to multiple chapters of my wildly speculative headcanons about them, you might enjoy this very scant assembly of fanworks involving one or both of them. Several have been written by me, as I feel no shame (well... less shame than I normally would) in linking to my own work when there is a sum total of one human being who has written this ship thus far and such scant attention has been paid to either character.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <b>Fanworks Featuring Both Dycedarg and Ruvelia</b>
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<strong><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/328020">"Horns"</a> (<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/moemachina/pseuds/moemachina">moemachina</a>): </strong>Oho! You might have thought this section would be nothing but my own pathetic self-recs, but you're only <em>mostly</em> right. "Horns" is a top notch piece of pre-canon Beoulve-oriented fic that I did not write and that features Dycedarg/Ruvelia as a pairing (sort of). While it's mostly about Zalbag and his relationship to his spirituality, his brother, and his grudging participation in unicorn hunts, it also involves some awesome scheming, hooking up, and banter between these two villains of my heart.   </li>
<li>
<strong><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/20728943">"Grace of Sundays"</a> (<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier">CorpseBrigadier</a>):</strong> Okay, the rest of this is now very firmly just stuff I wrote. Here's a ficlet about a tryst between these two for the sake of conceiving an heir. It features short wistful reflections on a lost girlhood and gratuitous plant references.</li>
<li>
<strong><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23076808">"Interruptions"</a> (<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier">CorpseBrigadier</a>):</strong> A much meatier piece I wrote, concerned with Dycedarg actually meeting the illegitimate son he produced in a Dycedarg-is-Orinas'-Dad scenario.</li>
</ul><hr/><p>
  <strong>Fanworks Featuring Ruvelia (and Let's Just Give Bestrada Some Love Too So This List Has More Than One Bullet Point)</strong>
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<strong><a href="https://www.deviantart.com/akira-h/art/Louveria-and-Orinus-147732785">"Louveria and Orinus"</a> (<a href="https://www.deviantart.com/akira-h">Akira Hujisawa</a>):</strong> Behold. A single solitary piece of fanart featuring my girl.</li>
<li>
<strong><a href="https://www.deviantart.com/akira-h/art/Duke-Larg-145917857">"Duke Larg"</a> (<a href="https://www.deviantart.com/akira-h">Akira Hujisawa</a>): </strong>An image in which Bestrada Larg looks almost sort of cool. </li>
<li>
<strong><a href="https://krozinworks.tumblr.com/post/145348792934/so-okay-like-some-background-this-was-my-first">Untitled Larg/Zalbag Piece</a> (<a href="https://krozinworks.tumblr.com/">krozinworks</a>):</strong> Another rare image of Bestrada, which incidentally also serves as proof that I am not completely alone in having impossibly niche ships between Beoulves and Largs.</li>
</ul><hr/><p>
  <strong>Fanworks Featuring Dycedarg</strong>
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<strong><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/327904">"The Godmothers"</a> (<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/moemachina/pseuds/moemachina">moemachina</a>): </strong>Moemachina just writes insanely good older Beoulve kid stuff. This work is not concerned solely with Dycedarg but it does have some really killer stuff about his relationship to Zalbag, his relationship to faith and magic, and his relationship to his stepmother.</li>
<li>
<strong><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/5465918">"Antipyretic"</a> (<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarsDragon/">MarsDragon</a>):</strong> Some exemplary Dycedargian scheming in a Zalbag-focused piece (Unsurprisingly <em>a lot </em>of anything with substantial amounts of Dycedarg is Zalbag-focused, given that he's a far more likable and protagonist-shaped older Beoulve)</li>
<li>
<strong><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/20871923/chapters/49612076">"Let Your Curse Be On Me"</a> (<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier">CorpseBrigadier</a>):</strong> Another self-rec, this time for an IF game featuring the two older Beoulve brothers having a shitty time during the conflict with Ordalia. While I have a lot of fanworks that feature Dycedarg, I wanted to link to this specifically as it is the place where I most thoroughly explored my personal headcanons concerning his relationship to his mother, which are obviously applicable to this manifesto.</li>
<li>
<strong><a href="https://www.deviantart.com/xaimn/art/Lune-Knight-Dycedarg-529473606">"Lune Knight, Dycedarg"</a> (<a href="https://www.deviantart.com/xaimn/">Xaimn</a>):</strong> What a hot douchebag.</li>
<li>
<strong><a href="https://00323z.tumblr.com/post/177518474254/justice-final-fantasy-tactics-dycedarg">"Justice?"</a> (00323z:<a href="https://00323z.tumblr.com"> tumblr</a> | twitter | pixiv):</strong> The Dycedarg from the artist's kickass series of one hour drawings of FFT characters.</li>
<li>
<strong><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/20993423">"Dycedarg in His Garden / Zalbaag in the Church"</a> (<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/chacusha">chacusha</a>):</strong> Art depicting Dycedarg and Zalbag, with the former shown in the midst of enjoying his poisonous plants hobby.</li>
<li>
<strong><a href="https://www.deviantart.com/akira-h/art/family-147348789">"Family"</a> (<a href="https://www.deviantart.com/akira-h">Akira Hujisawa</a>):</strong> I've listed a lot of examples from this artist, as their deep passion for obscure FFT characters obviously speaks to me. I cannot communicate how much the fact that they have drawn kid Dycedarg, infant Zalbag, and their unnamed mom fills me with delight.</li>
</ul>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <span class="small">See my <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier/profile">profile</a> for notes on remixes, podfic, derivative works, and constructive criticism.</span>
</p></blockquote></div></div>
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